


Unsteady

by Aryagraceling



Series: Catharsis [22]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst and Feels, Hidden Feelings, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-29 17:22:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18298766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aryagraceling/pseuds/Aryagraceling
Summary: The line between captured and captain blurs, and Shiro is left to sort out the pieces.





	Unsteady

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [FWU_2019_Mar_Under_the_Stars](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/FWU_2019_Mar_Under_the_Stars) collection. 



> I've recently started the show and long story short I'm very unhappy with the way the Galra revelation was sort of brushed off.
> 
> That's it. That's the story.

Keith isn’t hesitant. He’s not Lance, brash and headstrong enough to believe every decision is the right one, but he’s not  _ hesitant.  _ In the face of the Trials he takes off his armor without a second thought. Connecting the dots of his past are all that matters in this moment and though Shiro does not like it, he accepts it.

Even when bruises bloom over every inch of him and blood stains his shoulder, Keith isn’t hesitant. With fire in his eyes he charges, going after every Galra standing in his way. There’s a flicker when Shiro watches himself insult Keith, belittle him in a way that makes him  _ sick  _ as he watches from the command room. There’s the slightest shred of hurt in Keith’s eyes before insisting he won’t give up the blade. 

Not even when the news breaks that he’s got that monstrous blood running through his veins does he hesitate. He takes it in stride with a glance to where Shiro stands at alert, prepared to take him and get to Red should things get out of hand. Kolivan joins them when they leave, and Allura accepts the Galra into the Castle with only a few pointed questions. 

Through  _ everything-- _ the pain, the news, the look in Shiro’s eyes he knows he’s not hiding well--Keith does not hesitate to stand for what’s his. What is his, now, what is everything he holds near to his heart, is the armor he’s donned again. Shiro knows the feeling. Being open and being exposed is not a pleasant feeling, and under his eyes he knows it has to be far harder for the younger man.

Stars have never looked more inviting than tonight on the deck. Space has never been so beautiful, the Castle has never felt more like home, and the “I’m sorry” falling from Keith’s lips is the quietest Shiro has ever heard anyone speak. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, tears evident in his voice. “You can hate me, Shiro, it’s okay. I’m sorry.” He clutches his arms to himself when Shiro takes one step, and cringes into his chair when he takes another. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

“You’ve got Galra blood, Keith, that doesn’t mean you’re exempt from sleeping like the rest of us,” Shiro says. “I promise you’ll be more comfortable in regular clothes, even. Here--” he holds out the red jacket he’s become so fond of-- “I brought this for you.”

Keith can’t even look at the metallic glint of his arm. “I hurt you. I took and--” Armor clicks as he tucks his knees to his chest, taking an unsteady breath. “My people--” Another breath and he screws his eyes shut when Shiro kneels before him. He’s almost gasping, the desperate sound echoing through the room as he tries to find the words to say. “You  _ should  _ hate me, Shiro, not  _ can.  _ Should. I hurt…”

Knowledge or death, they told them, and it feels as though Keith is ready for the latter. 

Shiro does not speak again, only tucks the sweatshirt over where Keith’s feet rest on the edge. They sit, Keith mumbling apologies and Shiro in silence under the vast emptiness that lies on every side of them. It reminds Shiro of the blackness of the cells he was left in. Dank, inky depths that whisper nothing but loneliness are what he sees many nights, yet the captor’s blood pumping next to him makes him feel a little safer.

He’s kidding himself if he truly thinks the blood in Keith’s veins makes any sort of difference. Keith is still Keith. Keith is still the person who’s stayed up playing cards at odd hours, who’s sparred when no one else is willing, who…

Shiro rests his head on a bended knee and considers if he still wants the offer to lead Voltron extended. 

“I’m sorry,” Keith finally whispers again.

“You didn’t know.” Shiro does his best to keep the bitterness from his voice, to keep his upper lip from curling. “You’re still Keith.”

“I’m a monster.”

Shiro doesn’t deny it, and Keith’s tears fall. 

He knows it’s not right. Keith is hurting. Keith is hurting because Shiro picked him to come along, and Keith is hurting because Shiro can’t make it better this time. The sweatshirt over Keith’s feet falls to the floor as Shiro leans back to rest his head on armored shins, and the stars echo his soft cries of grief for the person he was.

_ Is, Shiro. _

There comes a point when the cries taper into sniffling and the slide of fabric over Keith’s face. “Why are you still here, Shiro?” he asks. “You don’t need to stick around. I know you don’t want to.”

“Because--” Shiro lets his hand unfurl from where it’s balled up by his side as he considers. Why, indeed? Duty, sure. Weeks and months of companionship. The way Keith looks at him and  _ has  _ looked at him from the first time Shiro opened his eyes. “Because you’re my…”

_ Friend  _ seems too little.

_ Lover  _ is too much.

“Your nightmare?” Keith’s voice is soft but there’s a goading in it that drives Shiro mad. “Captor?”

“Enough,” Shiro says. 

Keith’s face shield clicks against his knee as he folds impossibly closer into himself. “I don’t know who I am anymore.”

“I think you do,” Shiro counters. Regardless of the lineage Keith belongs to, he cannot begin to doubt himself. He can’t  _ hesitate.  _ He needs to be strong for Voltron, if not himself. “Does this suddenly change who you’ve been?”

“Yes,” Keith says, with absolute certainty.

“Why?”

“Because it’s tainted now.”

“Maybe you’re proof a Galra can be good.” Shiro knows this.  _ Fuck,  _ does he know it, but it’s hard to remember when the darkness rises. He swallows hard and turns his head, metal cool against his cheek as he struggles to keep his breath even. “Maybe you’re different.”

“It hurts, Shiro,” Keith says. “Being different hurts.”

“It could be the bruises,” Shiro says in an attempt to sway things, and Keith laughs mirthlessly. 

“It’s everything.”

When Shiro works up the courage to turn around, he sees a man in the throes of helplessness. Bleary eyes stare through a shield that looks like it’s the only thing holding him together, and Keith’s lower lip trembles under Shiro’s gaze. “You should take this off,” Shiro says. He raises a hand to brush his fingers over Keith’s knee and watches him tremble. “It might help with the pain.”

“It protects me,” Keith whispers. “Holds me together.”

Shiro takes a deep breath. “You have us for that too.”

Reticence reigns as their eyes lock. Shiro is unwilling to look away and Keith seems unwilling to slip out of the tenuous hold Shiro has on him. “Do I?”

“At the very least, you have me,” Shiro breathes. He leans forward to rest his forehead on the arm of the chair as Keith deflates. It’s a promise he doesn’t know he can keep forever, but it’s a promise he can keep for tonight. He’s willing to make it work for the man shaking below his steady hand. “Can you trust that?”

“Can you trust  _ me?”  _ Keith asks. 

Shiro will make that work too.

“Come on,” he mumbles, joints creaking as he stands and extends his hand. “Let’s get that armor off, okay? You don’t need to do anything else tonight. You should rest. Just, let’s…”

“If I wanted to?” Shiro barely hears the words, and Keith waves them away with an exhausted hand when he inquires. “Forget it,” he says. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

It’s not, but Shiro doesn’t have the heart to press as Keith leads him to the sleeping bays. He hears Hunk’s snoring and Lance’s sleep talking-- _ honestly, does he ever stop?-- _ before they stop, the metal of Shiro’s arm clicking against red gear. “Keith.”

“Hmm?”

“Do you want me to help you?”

Keith hesitates again before nodding and walking inside. It’s spartan at best, the way he’s decorated. Or  _ not,  _ Shiro thinks as Keith stills in front of him. “I want to go back to when I was human,” he says. “I want to be normal.”

“We can’t time jump that away,” Shiro says softly. “It’s part of you.”

“I hurt you.”

It’s a behavior Shiro hasn’t really encountered in him before tonight, fixating.  _ “You  _ haven’t done anything,” he assures through the burning in his throat. “You were on Earth while I was up there.” Keith looks back to see his finger raised to the roof. “You haven’t given me any reason to think of you that way.”

“Yeah, well…” Keith’s shoulders droop and he lets himself fall against the wall. “Yeah.”

Dragging himself from the dark well of memories is hard. Seeing one of his paladins in pain is hard. His job as their head, hard. The situation, everything they’ve been through and everything they’ll go through later…

_ Hard.  _

So is getting off Keith’s armor without hurting him. They take it achingly slow. Each piece is set aside with care, Keith trembling with each brush of Shiro’s fingers over bruised skin. He does his best not to press too hard, even when Keith all but collapses back into him. Weariness is written over every battered inch and Shiro  _ knows  _ the way it feels to have every ounce of strength wrung from you. 

Keith’s nails dig into his shoulder when he kneels to bare the younger man’s legs. “It’s ugly, isn’t it?” he asks. “The cuts, the bruises.”

“What’s ugly is your attitude,” Shiro says quietly. It’s a choice he doesn’t want to make right now, friend over barely faded past, but leadership is something bigger than his own frustrations. “You’re being too hard over something you...can’t control.”

Can’t  _ change.  _

“I’m afraid, Shiro.”

“Why?”

Keith draws in a breath before tugging Shiro away from where he’s stalling on the remaining few pieces of armor. “I am afraid,” he says, throat working hard as he turns to face him, “because I want you to see me as a man. Not a monster.”

“Would seeing you as an equal work just as well?”

“Shiro…” Keith winces as he brings his arms up to fold between them. He pitches forward and leans his head against Shiro’s shoulder, brow knitting when Shiro cautiously wraps an arm around his waist. “Can a Galra be equal to you?”

“Ulaz was better,” Shiro says, tilting his head to rest against Keith’s. “He was willing to give everything.”

“You’re not?”

“Sit.” Shiro guides Keith back until his knees hit the bed and he sits with a sharp huff. Kneeling, Shiro takes his hands. “I have lost everything, Keith. I’ve been in a position lower than what most people will  _ ever  _ have to deal with and you know what? I’m scared too. Every day, I get up and face that because people depend on me. You--” he lets his eyes roam over Keith’s pinched face-- “are free to be afraid. But there are no monsters here.”

“Am I free to make a choice?” Keith asks.

“Of course,” Shiro says. Keith’s trembling again, nearly rocking the mattress with the renewed force. “You’re always free to do that.”

Chapped lips meet his in the split second before he takes a breath. Keith’s hands are cupping Shiro’s face and pulling him up and over the mattress, onto all fours above him. There’s a moment of steadiness before the younger man breaks. His arms come around Shiro’s shoulders to tug him to the bed, face burning as he buries it in Shiro’s neck. “I’m a man,” he repeats again and again to the tune of Shiro’s reassurances. “Tell me, Shiro.”

“Hey.” Shiro’s hands are firm as he anchors Keith’s face between them, looking down with all the care he can muster. “You are Keith. You are a Paladin of Voltron, and you are not a monster. I promise.”

Slim fingers circle his wrists as Keith presses his cheek into Shiro’s hand. “I’m sorry if you didn’t want that. I just knew it might be...my last chance.”

“It was unexpected.”

Keith tenses.

“But not...unwanted.” The word ghosts from Shiro’s lips over Keith’s cheek before Shiro’s face falls to the pillow. “You’re wanted, Keith.”

“I sound like an outlaw.” There’s the slightest bit of humor in his laugh this time, and Shiro’s heart pounds at the sound. “Wanted…”

Shiro breaks away to recline next to him, nodding shakily as he shuts his eyes. There’s a confusing mess of emotion churning in his chest. Hope, sure, but also fear, frustration, and a disgust he doesn’t dare to consider allowing into the light.  _ A good Galra. Good.  _ The purple blooming on Keith’s arm next to him is nowhere near the lavender of Galra skin but somehow it seems worse, because it came from the people Shiro knows so well.

_ Knew. _

It’s a reminder of harm from the same people swearing to help them, and Shiro needs to accept that. “You should think about getting healed,” he rasps as Keith’s fingers twine with his. “You’re not under their watch anymore.”

“It’s a reminder of everything,” Keith says. “My trials.”

_ Their  _ trials, because Shiro knows he won’t be able to see anything else until he can get himself under control.  _ Good. He is good.  _ “You don’t need to hurt, though.”

“I’ll heal on my own,” Keith says. He whines as he turns onto his side to look up through dark lashes. “Stay?”

“For a bit,” Shiro says. He’ll lull Keith to sleep and leave to take stock of his prejudice. The heavy-lidded stares, soft brushes of fingers in the halls, teasing lilt in his words--Shiro cannot throw months of slow escalation out with the revelation that’s paining Keith as much as it’s paining him. “I need sleep too.”

Keith doesn’t ask any more of him, seemingly content to rest against him until his breathing evens and eyes shut. Pliant limbs drop away from Shiro’s body and Shiro lets out a low groan as he presses his hands to his face. Hiding isn’t easy. He’d rather be sitting in a forest on Earth and considering  _ why him,  _ but he doesn’t get that luxury. He has to learn on the fly and bury it all under the mask of leader. 

He can’t let them see the terror in his eyes.

He’s got to figure this out before he breaks.

He’s got to learn to make peace with his past.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments always read and _very_ much appreciated, and I always do my best to get back to them ❤️
> 
> You can also find me lurking and yelling about fictional characters on:  
> [Twitter](https://www.twitter.com/aryagraceling)  
> [Discord](https://discord.gg/cM8FaND)  
> [Tumblr](https://aryagraceling.tumblr.com)  
> [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/groups/601270063618951)


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